Thursday, May 03, 2007

Not a Ballband!

Barbara Walker's Endless Branch is turning out pretty well. It's bigger than I thought it would be, but I suspect all of her swatches were done at a much smaller gauge. This is the front of a little handbag. No I'm not fast with this one. I've been picking at this for quite a while. I have done a bit of dyeing here and there. I have a ton more to dye up for my yarn store which is what I do with nearly all of the yarn I dye. This is Wilton's food dye colours. I don't have access to acid dyes and truthfully I'm not sure I ever will play with them. I have breathed enough crap in my life working in a planer mill with dry, burnt wood dust and ash flying around everywhere and from smoking, that I don't want to add powdered acid dyes to that mix. Unless you wear a respirator while mixing water into the dyes, you've breathed some of them. I have three more years to go until all the smoker/wood-dust cells in my body have been regenerated (it takes seven years for every cell in your body to regenerate itself) and I want the new ones to be healthy with as little crap in them as possible. So food dyes it is. Safer for me, the children and since I use citric acid (large granules easily confused with sugar) and vinegar as mordants, the environment too.Picture taken a week ago. The pussy willows are much bigger and nearly unrecognizable now. The trees are starting to bloom, finally. The bit of rain we had was not enough to bring up the lake levels (Ice is finally out!) but it was enough to make the trees and growing things happy enough to start opening.

Awww, I so love these colors! I'm with you here, I think food dyes are so much better for anyone involved plus way more ecologically safe - and as I see it, the colors you get with these food dyes can't be topped by any acidy ones!